Increasingly, computer systems have needed to protect themselves against unwanted code. Such unwanted code has generally taken the form of viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, and so forth. The damage and/or inconvenience capable of being incurred by these types of unwanted code has ranged from mild interference with a program, such as the display of an unwanted political message in a dialog box, to the complete destruction of contents on a hard drive, and even the theft of personal information.
Many mechanisms have been created in order to provide the much needed protection from such unwanted code and the effects thereof. For example, firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention software, scanners, spyware, etc. have been used to guard against various types of unwanted code. In use, a firewall typically blocks various network communications based on a predetermined set of rules. Still yet, scanners traditionally scan computer code when such code is accessed and/or on an on-demand basis.
Manufactures of these and other mechanisms are continuously striving to develop technology that provides “zero-day” protection or technology that provides similar protection. Unfortunately, despite such efforts, various types of unwanted code continue to circumvent such mechanisms, potentially causing damage before being detected. One difficulty with detecting such unwanted code involves the fact that any effect of its presence may not be detected before the unwanted code has already compromised an associated system.
There is thus a need for overcoming these and/or other problems associated with the prior art.